Yesterday  we ended up packing up everything and drove from Livingstone to Kalomo,  which is an hour or so north. Its amazing the temperature difference in such a short distance but its  still very  hot out. Its Always interesting though when the locals complain about the heat almost more than we do, then you know it’s hot out!
   So we set up in the church our little tent city.

It all looked very practical bit throughout the day and night we ran into many issues. Our portable fridge wouldn’t work, there was only one toilet for all 8 of us in this trip, all water is through a pump outside which kept getting turned off by the water works company so this meant no showers in the morning.
Then we didn’t realize how busy the church was. They had a prayer meeting going on in the evening so we thought we’d attend, especially since the church is one big L-shaped room with no dividers not like we could hide anywhere. The service started out great, some preaching and singing, the lady spoke with authority and read some scripture. Then we got to the prayer part, which could more be described as everyone around you talking, yelling, pacing, bending and jumping around. The amount of noise in that building was deafening and would probably scare more north American Christians away. They do things a bit differently out here, but I admire the passion behind everything they do! Part way through the prayers the power went out, as it always ones every Tuesday and Thursday night. There would be an uprising if that happened back in Canada bit out here that’s normal. Its done to conserve power as those are peak cooking times of about 7pm and last for a few hours. When the power went out they never skipped a beat, just kept praying with conviction. I must say it was the most incredible sound when they broke out into random harmonies at the end! Wish I was blessed with a voice like them but hey, can’t have everything right! We left the service early when they started to do a prophecy session, for us first timers they didn’t want to scare us to much. Its the first service I’ve been too where we actually had to debrief after!
    It was a perfect night out, cooled down but still warm, so many stars in the sky and a bit of a breeze! We walked down to a local restaurant for dinner at about 8pm to end our night….or so I thought.
   After dinner I suddenly felt a bit nauseous, wasn’t as stable walking back to the church and exhausted. I thought it was the food and just needed to digest. Pretty soon after I laid down I realized I was actually sick. I spent most of the night in the courtyard by the water pump being sick which isn’t something that happens to me. I managed to sleep an hour between sessions but felt like I was overheating. I think my bad sunburns played a roll in giving me some sunstroke. When morning came I was just so weak, dizzy, empty. I couldn’t hardly drink or eat anything. The whole team was amazing helping me to the washroom, chair, helping me cool down and so accommodating. While I was resting the guys were talking and I guess it’s been known of people having similar symptoms after white water rafting and ingesting part of the Zambezi river. This made a lot of sense to me and as I’m on the mend now I’m hoping they’re right and it’s only a 24 hour recoup time. While this information was great the sun was heating the place up and they kept doing everything to keep me cool, even placing me in the airconditioned van for a bit. I fell asleep on the couch a few times, just so tired, but woke up to a great surprise. Simeon had booked us all rooms in a local lodge for the remaining 9 nights because of all the issues and heat. They got me up and brought me over right away so I could sleep in a cool area, and that’s what I’ve been doing all day is sleeping. Managed to get a few rice cakes and grapes down but food is definitely not appetizing at the moment.
   By the end of the night I was able to sit at the dinner table with everyone and have my dinner of rice cake and grapes. Just sitting there looking around realizing how blessed we are to have such a loving, diverse, random family of every colour and age! That is how the world should be!
   Time to finish getting better and praying the rain that started tonight doesn’t come down too much till we get a few wells drilled. Tomorrow we do our first VBS session in a village so please pray for health, safety and strength for us all!!